


Fearful Symmetry

by ScienceofObsession



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post Reichenbach, Reunion, Reunion take, Sherlock comes back from the dead, Slash Goggles, depressed!John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:19:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScienceofObsession/pseuds/ScienceofObsession
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My take on the reunion. Cameos by depressed!John, angry!John, listless!John, lonely teacups, ghost!Sherlock, manhugs, emotional rebuilding and more.<br/>________</p><p>  <i>The symmetry of it all did not escape John.</i></p><p>  <i>That Sherlock, who lived so brazenly, died as such. With his arms outstretched, welcoming it. With all those faces turned towards the spectacle, with John’s eyes unable to tear away from the fucked up mistake happening in front of him. As always, performing at his best with an audience.</i></p><p>  <i>And now that John, who lived unassumingly, was dying in the same quiet way that suited him.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Fearful Symmetry

**Author's Note:**

> _“Life must go on; I forget just why.”_ – Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

 

The symmetry of it all did not escape John.

That Sherlock, who lived so brazenly, died as such. With his arms outstretched, welcoming it. With all those faces turned towards the spectacle, with John’s eyes unable to tear away from the fucked up mistake happening in front of him. As always, performing at his best with an audience.

And now that John, who lived unassumingly, was dying in the same quiet way that suited him. That he was braving out each day in silence - eating, working, sleeping. But steadily, with the regularity of his tired heartbeat, dying. Dying under pitying gazes from everyone he knows, but so quietly that they do not notice the blessing they’re giving.

Not literally dying, not right now – John’s not nearly that dramatic. But as he’s no longer really living, an inevitable pull towards eventual death is all this is. Someday down the line, when he’s older and more broken and his body decides it has had enough, then John will look back and know that the whole process started right here. Right under that ledge at Bart’s, right here in a too-quiet flat on Baker Street, in empty chairs and Chinese takeaway for one. All those places where he shed little bits of his life until what he was left with was just a vehicle ( _transportation, right Sherlock?),_ a means to an ultimate end. Sometimes he finds himself jealous of Sherlock’s quick burn, his dramatic exit that cut off all this nonsense of fading.

 

+++

 

The biscuits Mrs. Hudson brings him taste of sympathy and bitterness. He can’t bring himself to buy milk; the fridge sits like an empty tomb and he learns to take his tea black.

 

+++

 

John thinks the reason he’s lasted this long is that he has too much soldier wrapped up in his bones. His tired lips and fingertips and eyelids are being propped up by this inconvenient will to live _no matter what_ , that survival instinct that has dogged him since the desert, an invasion of hot sand in his boots. In the days of Sherlock ( _SherlockandJohn_ ) that instinct was a godsend, the savior on not a few occasions, the reason he was able to keep up with that flapping coat and the footsteps of a man who was more universal to John than he had any right being. But now, in these slow, dim days, John is just so damned tired. He no longer welcomes that survival instinct; he sits in his chair staring at the wall and wonders how he could cut it out. Wonders if a scalpel could search it out, extract it, if only so he can finally rest. But each day his trembling fingers fail to find it, each day the prying sun rises and there’s newspapers and toast and the clinic and an awkward pint with a worried friend and John just keeps surviving.

It doesn’t really make sense, this translucent John. It doesn’t seem right that he should grimly shoulder so many desert deaths only to have this one single end break him. How many times did he calmly plug a pulsing artery with his finger, how many times did he tear open a bloody uniform and look upon a wasteland of flesh without losing himself? How many glassy eyes did he close with a ragged sigh, and move on to the next cot with a steady hand? John would like to say countless…but he did count. Each futile one. And that number etched in the inside of his eyelids is what confuses him – he’s carried these dead with him now for so long and remained _John_. They’ve made him who he is. So why, why would one missing heartbeat make such a difference?

 _Because it’s wasn’t just a heartbeat, was it?_ It wasn’t just blood and bone and sinew and tissue. It was a flashing gaze, an errant curl. Slender fingers and coltish limbs, ghost-pale skin, the smell of iodine and old papers. It was huffed breath and midnight concertos, sinewy grace, a deeply growled “John” that stopped time. Because it was Him. A casualty of a completely different war.

John tries not to think about what it means, that Sherlock was so different.  He doesn’t want to dig deep and find something living within him that he never knew before, now that it’s too late. What could possibly get better at this point? How would that introspection change anything, but to make each day grittier and just really, honestly _fuck him up_? He’s pretty sure the cracks he’s learned to keep pinched together couldn’t withstand thinking too much about what Sherlock really meant to him. He’s gone, and anything left is just regrets and suppositions – theories with no experiment available to prove them beyond looping nightmares. So he keeps them hidden, buried like old bones, poking up towards delicate skin but never quite piercing through.

 

++++

 

One morning, Mrs. Hudson comes in tentatively with an empty packing box.

“Don’t you think perhaps it’s time, dear?” She places a hand gently on his arm. He hates her for the soft look in her eyes.

Later she finds the empty box in the alley. They do not speak of it again.

 

++++++

 

He sees Sherlock everywhere. John’s used to it by now, he knows it’s not good ( _a bit not good, yeah_ ) but he accepts that those glimpses are what keeps him afloat. He welcomes Sherlock into his subconscious and lets him stay, an honored guest. Sometimes Sherlock even talks to him, muttering and squinting as he makes observations about the people around them. Those days are special. John closes his eyes and lets that haunting baritone lap at his edges, breathes it in with the dirge of the city.

This morning Sherlock was at the coffee shop. John thought he looked good as a ginger, with his hair cropped a bit short. He didn’t quite have the same gravity as he did with the dark curls, but it suited him. Better than the long hair and stubbly beard he was sporting last week in Regent’s park. Once he even had glasses, thick-rimmed things that fit the current fashion. John had always thought Sherlock would look good in glasses, should his body ever have the audacity to develop the handicap of less-than-perfect vision. He had been right, of course.

Today, Sherlock hovered back in the queue, close enough to hear John’s order, but he had melted away by the time John turned around with a hot cup in his hand. John thought this was just as well, as he didn’t think he could be trusted not to stare – it’s been implied before that strangers don’t really appreciate when he does that. But when the ghost of Sherlock appears, John has little restraint. Once he frantically followed it for hours, his thigh increasingly objecting to his pace, until finally losing it on a crowded streetcorner. Finding himself awash on the shore of a place he was unfamiliar with, alone and with an aching hole in his chest, he almost lost it. Almost sat right there on his heels and gave in. But John is a soldier. He _soldiers on_. He is sustained by hope and stubbornness and resentment and anger – both empty and filling.

He mourns not only his friend, but the life they’d built together. The lapping, familiar bile of his dark invalided months stains every sunrise. He fends it off futilely, burning with the selfishness of wanting Sherlock just for this reason. He justifies it as self-preservation.

           

+++++

 

_“Do you believe in life after death, Sherlock? Reincarnation, ghosts, anything like that?”_

_“Irrelevant. It can’t be proven, so it’s pointless to spend time on conjecture. We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”_

The Browning’s chamber clicks crisply.

  _“Not too soon, yeah?”_

Pounding footsteps prove that this life is still very much in progress. John follows Sherlock out into the darkness.

 

+++++

 

Sometimes, when John comes into the living room at Baker Street, he can see Sherlock sitting in his chair. He can see those long legs reaching, arms lazily flung about, housecoat whispering against his pale wrists, hair askew. But when John blinks, Sherlock disappears. And then John’s left with Tesco bags with too much food or a newspaper that nobody read or two cups of tea when he only meant to make one. There’s a place that John sets Sherlock’s tea when he’s made an extra, a spot on the coffee table he never looks directly at. And sometimes John can’t even bring himself to clear them when they’ve gone cold, and they form a flock, taunting him. Punishing him for forgetting that he’s alone and for thinking that tea will fix this. Wasn’t there a time when tea fixed everything? _So long ago now._

At night, the Strad wakes him up. He knows he’s heard it, shimmering on the outskirts of his consciousness, and he emerges, his heart pounding. It pushes against the raw edge of his ribs, the frantic beating belying a traitorous hope that its lost companion has somehow returned. And John, gasping, softly palms it, tucks the fragile thing away against his gaping chest and lies back down. He’s not sure if these dreams are worse than his old nightmares, but he thinks they might be. This ragged, sucking loss just might be worse than the feel of the red stain that bloomed once on his shoulder. He can see the blood pouring out of this chest, needy and fleeing, and he doesn’t even mind. Because he knows he’s losing a little more each day and there’s nothing to be done about it, and he’s seen enough blood in his life to not be alarmed at the sight of his own. He tastes the iron on his tongue as he lays in the dark.

 

++++

 

In the middle of a violent night, John takes all the bullets out of his clip and hides them. He hopes in the morning he’ll have forgotten where they are.

 

++++

 

John comes home from the clinic, a lonely bag of thai takeaway in his stiff hand. Up the stairs, into the flat, a quick look around. Not looking for Sherlock, he tells himself, not hoping to see that something, _anything_ has changed while he was out.

His laptop is still there on the coffee table, right where he left it. It hasn’t been stolen by a sodding flatmate who has no sense of personal boundaries and an aggravatingly efficient penchant for cracking passwords. There are no new holes in the wall, no piles of books to navigate through on the way to his chair. The room is revoltingly tidy. Bland. Lifeless. It’s appalling how much life has _gone out_ of the space, even though someone living still inhabits it.

The kitchen is still clean, everything right where it was this morning after breakfast. John never realized how boring it was to come home and find everything just how you left it. How did Sherlock know that - know just the right line to dance up to without crossing? Just enough beakers on the counter, just enough bodyparts haphazardly communing with the cheese and tomatoes. Just enough to remind John why life _was interesting_ , without driving him completely mad. It was a balance that John didn’t appreciate until it was gone and the chaos was pushed out in favor of stale air and clean expanses of countertop. John is thankful for the small reminders left in the stains dotting every flat surface in that sterile space, holds them dear, touches them with a reverent fingertip.

With a growl, he throws a mug at the fireplace, closes his eyes against the satisfying shatter. He doesn’t pick up the pieces for a week.

 

+++

 

On a Tuesday night, John punches a man at the pub and gets thrown out. He pushes against bitter tears when he realizes it’s the most exciting thing that has happened to him in almost 14 months.

 

++++

 

John lives with a constant reminder of why he’s broken again. That flapping coat against the white stone of Barts, the feel of a warm wrist, pulseless and limp. The blood in rivers darkening the pavement. The image is seared on the inside of his skull, surrounding him with a too-tight grasp, haunting him with a stubborn regularity soldier-John can appreciate. It’s folded up in the tight corners of his bedsheet that are torn every night amidst thrashing nightmares, it’s sitting in the fridge with the old butter and absence of eyeballs. It’s in the empty, cold leather expanse of couch that seems too big for one person. It’s in that opera that John recognized but couldn’t remember the name of and there was nobody to ask. That image is John’s new companion. His new Sherlock, reincarnate.

Maybe that’s why he sees Sherlock everywhere. Because wouldn’t he rather see him in the tube, alive and blonde, instead of broken, laid out as a sacrifice on the red sidewalk? Why wouldn’t he want to replace that haunting image with one of Sherlock on the streetcorner, wearing some ridiculous hat and a brown coat that clashes awfully with salmon trousers? John knows which image he’d rather see at night when he can’t sleep. So he welcomes ghost-Sherlock into his life, coaxes him out of hiding, so he can stock up his mind with memories that don’t involve blood and gravity and yelling into a phone pressed up against his ear so tightly his skin burns.

 

+++++

 

John decides to attend a Sunday mass. He leaves halfway through, disappointed, the benediction as hollow as his chest.

 

++++++

 

People that know John ( _friends, John, they’re friends_ ) tell him it’s time he started to move on. Started piecing some things back together, learning to live life with a Sherlock-shaped hole and finding things to fill it up again. He knows they’re right, and he absolutely despises the weakness he’s showing. He’s a fucking solider. He shouldn’t be this shattered, this powerless so long after Sherlock has gone.

_Gone. Not died._

And there, right there, that’s the surreptitious conviction that he doesn’t quite look at straight on, that he doesn’t quite see. This death is unaccepted, unresolved. John refuses to actively wonder where Sherlock is, doesn’t face those hardest questions of _how_ or _why_ , but he holds that hope dear, never not listening for footsteps on the stair. Never really believing the promise of that silent black headstone, even as he kneels before it. 

John blames it on faith, that oft-blind thing men cling to against better judgment. He can hear Sherlock’s derisive laugh at the thought, and maybe that’s why he keeps it close – a defiance in memoriam. In John’s mind the argument continues, Sherlock’s condescension meeting stubborn trust. Sometimes John yells into the empty flat, as if expecting the universe to carry a message on the wind. It never feels as satisfying as he hopes.

 

++++

 

John quits going to his therapist again. The blog lays dormant, hoarding memories.

 

++++++

 

Some days, hidden amidst John’s routine of pretending to live, the background grief crystallizes into anger. He flirts with that bitter burn, threatens to turn it into some sort of useful will, almost abandons this existence to turn his heel, set his jaw, march on. He comes so close to deciding that he’ll let Sherlock go, send him away. Because _Sherlock left him_ and how does that mean he deserves the gift of John’s mourning? John laid it at his ghostly feet willingly, he knows, but perhaps it was time to take it back.

But when one mixes sorrow and anger with a flickering faith, the result is nothing as clear as simply moving on.

Ever the soldier, John does have some resolve left. So, in the face of needing to _do something_ , he sets up a brutal campaign against Sherlock’s ghost. When he catches a glimpse of that familiar curve of cheek or sharp shoulder, he forces the flickering glance away, refuses to indulge himself. It leaves him cold, empty, but he perseveres, painfully diligent. His heart, picked clean after so much self-absorption, feels wrung out and bleached, a sad little thing.

It dawns on him that he has traded the wilderness of his emotions for a chance at peace. At least John has the clarity to realize that the exchange is something Sherlock would have approved of. The _reasonable_ choice. A hostage exchange.

John tries not to think of how this feels too close to full circle, a matte resurrection of the shipped-home invalid, shuffling through bleak days. He’s forgotten how to live that life, and he steeps in the despair of re-education.

And so John carries on, dampened and flatlined. The pain lessens, Sherlock feels further away, and the blackened corners of his life start to fold in.

A new man grows in the cleared spaces, one who can occasionally find a smile in a friend’s company, who feels reasonably accomplished after a day setting sprains and perfecting stitches. He even attempts a few dates, though it feels wrong to sit at a table with strangers. At least he feels like he’s trying.

John can once again see beauty in the world without the tint of jealousy and bitterness. He doesn’t _feel_ it, but he can appreciate its presence, doggedly chasing contentment. He takes it on like an assignment from the god he’s not sure he believes in.

 

++++++

 

In Sherlock’s room, John opens the windows. When he emerges, cheeks damp, he does not close the door.

 

++++++

 

At the top of the steps, John looks up to see Sherlock in the living room, the eye of a silent storm, gaunt and wearing ill-fitting clothes. He hasn’t seen Sherlock’s ghost in months now, and his step falters as the sight grips him mercilessly. Blood rushing, he takes in a deep breath and closes his eyes with a grimace. After all this time, he just wants to drink in the sight of that familiar specter; he’s not sure if he can stop himself, right here in his flat with nowhere to run _._ He feels too weary to even make a conscious decision. _Not now, I can’t. Please._

When his eyelids open and Sherlock is still there, John can see the violent eternity of tonight stretching out in front of him. His heart gives a feeble clinch at the thought; he had been doing so well.

With a tight mouth, John heads resignedly into the kitchen, a small shopping bag dropping on the bare table. His back to the ghost, he starts putting a few items into the refrigerator; the door holds him up as he wavers.

Behind him, the ghost moves, a shimmering heat. _Oh God, he feels so real._ John squeezes his eyes shut again and waits, counts the seconds. Breathes.

“John.”

The sound of that voice ( _him, Him, HIM, in waves_ ) hits John straight in the diaphragm, air and strength leaving his body in an exodus as his knees buckle. Half turned, twisted in front of the open refrigerator, he looks up from the floor at the man ( _ghost man_ _Sherlock_ ) coming towards him. In all the times the ghost has talked to him, he never felt it like this. He never felt that voice _vibrating._ Something falters in his brain, frantically clutching for a certainty.

An outstretched hand, a placation, reaches. “John, I’m home.” Eyes blaze from a malnourished face. _No, no, no those eyes are dead and gone and oh, I remember that color in my bones._

“Sher…Sherlock?” The name feels wrong on this tongue. Something he saved just for himself, a private memorial he no longer says and shares.

Kneeling in supplication, Sherlock grabs John’s shoulders with startling force, fingers gripping, and after a tentative moment, pulls him fiercely into his chest. Hard arms encircle John, enveloping him, and he lets out a whimper as _ribs nose hands_ _cheek_ confirm the reality of the man clinging to him. After a moment of disbelief, he completes the embrace, holding tightly, a hot wetness flooding his stomach, his eyes, his mouth.

 

221B lets out a deep, sorrowful breath, and draws the curtains.

 

On the kitchen floor, John’s guts are screaming - _I told you he wasn’t dead and oh thank god and holy shit where the fuck have you been_. He pulls slightly away, taking Sherlock’s face in his hands and searching it desperately for answers. He’s both unfamiliar and perfectly remembered, new and the most treasured old.

“I can’t believe you’re here.” The warmth of Sherlock under his palms anchors him, the only thing that seems real.

“I’m here John. I am more sorry than you can know for all of this. But I’m here now.”

“But how? Why?” _Where have you been and why wasn’t I there and why did you lie and oh jesus I touched your dead body._ He breaks their touch and sits back on his heels as his chest becomes a battlefield: confusion, relief, fury, betrayal, joy, disbelief. They mix and clash, the patterns and colors crossing his face, unsettling and consuming. John sets his jaw and tries to force his brain to focus, if only just so he could grasp onto something solid.

The air darkens as Sherlock closes his eyes, a painful wash over his features. He stands up and drifts towards the sitting room. John watches silently, nothing moving but his gaze, then pulls himself up and follows. He can’t tell if he’s empty or full, he just feels _spent._ He stares at the back of Sherlock’s head as his heart desperately tries to remember the enveloping heat of emotion.

Sherlock turns to him, and John sees a ferocity hiding under the solemn exterior. “Moriarty,” he says around clenched teeth. There’s so much in that one polluted word. So much ruin, so much lost time. So many things John has tried to forget.

As the name hangs in the air, John thinks he’s known this all along, somewhere deep and shunned. For now, it’s just enough to answer his question. He soaks it in, runs it around in his mind, stares at this reborn man in front of him. He feels his heartbeat in his fingers, temples, a disconcerting flush that threatens to reduce him to shivers. Saliva fills his mouth, his gorge rising. Somewhere in the flat a clock ticks.

Then John remembers the lie in Sherlock’s death, and his fists clench. “All this time…” He pauses; a flaming heat curls up his spine and it feels so good to burn once again.

Sherlock sees it, and knows the questions John is asking with his anger. They’re in his stance, the flush of skin, the jaw that flexes, the steady breath through flared nostrils. Sherlock puts out a placating hand and John lets out a huff of warning derision.

“I couldn’t risk your life, John. I couldn’t.” He sounds strained. Accused and earnest, his voice matches the new scars pressed into his skin.

John wants to accept this blithely – he can see straight through to the truth in Sherlock’s eyes, the heartbreaking apology swimming there. Those eyes… John thinks back to all the times he’s looked at them and wondered what he was seeing ( _the map he could never read_ ) and he wants to just let go because now he _does know_ and he feels so eager for that honesty. But more insisting than that opportunity is something menacing, and it swells up and escapes him, growling.

“You didn’t want to risk my life? That’s the reason you’ve been dead for _three fucking years_?” It’s ground out between clenched teeth, then his voice rises, yelling a release. “You risked my life every damned day we lived together! The insane things we did… God, Sherlock, that doesn’t even make any sense!” He pauses, chest heaving as he feels his foundations cracking, betrayal flushing his cheeks. Then it slips out, a childish whisper: “I could have gone with you.”

Sherlock flinches as if struck. Takes a deep breath, starts, pauses, frowns. Starts again. John tries not to lose his focus in the fact that Sherlock is actually _considering someone’s feelings_ before speaking. He looks up and his intensity holds John’s eyes.

“John.” It’s a baseline, anchoring. “I don’t just mean your safety or your life. I mean _you_. I couldn’t risk _you_. The things I’ve done, they would ruin you. You’re _too good._ I barely survived, and look at what I am. I couldn’t make you do those things with me.” A shimmer of remorse fills his begging gaze, gathering under his lashes. “I needed something to come home to. I needed you to still be here for me when it was over.”

The naked earnest in that statement, given in the heart of the home they shared, is all it takes.

John scrubs his face in defeat; he’s battered and so damned tired. “God, Sherlock. I am barely here. I’m… a ghost.”

A few small steps, and Sherlock is in front of him, grabbing his shoulders and shaking them with conviction. “John, it was you that got me through this. It was here, knowing that when it was all done that I could come home. Please don’t tell me I was wrong.”

“No, you’re not wrong,” John says. He exhales over Sherlock’s visible relaxation, the taught string slackened. “I just… I can’t promise what you’ll find, I don’t even know anymore.” He feels tears pricking. “I always hoped you’d come home and now you have and I can’t even remember what I’m supposed to be.”

“You… you hoped I’d come home?” Sherlock breathes it out, the trust in his whisper curling around John’s ears.

“I never quite…I couldn’t, Sherlock, I just couldn’t believe it. Never fully.” He shakes his head, filled with regret for all the mourning, the confusion, the emptiness of his time alone. How different would he be if he’d known for certain that Sherlock was alive? He doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to know who that man would be now. This John, broken and listless, this is what he is, and there’s no changing it.

Sherlock looks at him with a sorrowful smile. “My loyal blogger.”

John returns the beginnings of a smile, haltingly, as if he’s forgotten how it works, and pulls Sherlock into another heartfelt embrace. He doesn’t think about how they never touch this way, or how two men don’t usually find themselves being so honest and open. He only thinks _this feels right_ , and that he’s never going to let Sherlock go.

 

++++

 

“John, remember when you asked me about reincarnation?” Sherlock is in his chair, reminding himself what home feels like.

John nods slowly in the pre-dawn light, recalling. “You said it was impossible to prove and therefore not worth consideration.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

John swallows, feels the blessing of a second chance burning in his throat.

 

+++++

 

John checks on the softly breathing outline in Sherlock’s bed before he goes to the clinic, taking in the signs of someone worn completely out of their corporeal form. He thinks of his own scars, so much deeper than the mess on his shoulder, and wonders what wounds Sherlock now has, wonders if they’ll match. He wants to stretch out beside him and compare, cataloguing each torment.

John half expects to come home and find it was all a dream. ( _Nightmare.)_ Instead, he is greeted by his returned-from-the-dead flatmate laid out on the couch, hands folded characteristically under his chin and wrapped in a familiar dressing gown. John aches as he feels, instantaneously, that no time has passed at all. He pauses at the door to take in the missed novelty of coming home to another heartbeat in the flat.

John crosses his arms and leans against the wall, barely inside the room “So, is it all really over, then?” He is too wary to hope that Sherlock will stay, fall back into worn patterns. He considers what they’ll have to relearn, what will change.

Sherlock opens his eyes and finds John, sits up after a beat and studies him intently. John feels flayed, exposed, and tightens his arms. Wonders what Sherlock sees when he looks at him now.

“I told you John, I’m not leaving again. Anything that remains we will do together.”

Comforting. So weakness, then, is what Sherlock sees. John supposes he can’t blame him – his frame says exhaustion and disbelief with every motion. In an attempt to begin his crawl back to _John_ , he nods briefly in stiff agreement. “Yeah, good.”

 

+++++

 

(John finds shivering secrets sitting on the doorstep at dawn. _Let them in won’t you?_ He won’t look at them, won’t study their layers and patterns without Sherlock’s guidance. Oh, but he aches to learn them.)

 

_++++++_

Baker Street is in pieces, a chaos of heart and mind. Slowly, and with the care borne of mutual uncertainty and buried hopefulness, John and Sherlock begin to rebuild. Fitting the jagged edges in, crumbling soft boundaries to make new shapes, pricking fingers on sharp corners. The form resembles shared history, new fractures and sutures giving it a complex expansion.

On the surface, Sherlock is racing around in his well-trod frantic fashion. But John hears the message in the small hours, in offered cups of tea and a quiet night watching telly, small niceties so uncharacteristic of his friend. Perhaps Sherlock learned something of decency out there, when he was so short of it in the wilds. They both try it on tentatively.

The effort is clumsy and beautiful.

 

+++++

 

John swears that someday, somehow, he’ll get Sherlock to _really_ apologize. And then they will compare scars, then he will learn the secrets of those lost years.

 

++++

 

“What’s it like, John, to have faith?”

“It hurts, Sherlock. It feels futile. Yet… here you are. Isn’t that saying something?”

A moue of genuine consideration passes Sherlock’s face before he pulls a half-hearted grimace.

“That just means you’re stubborn. And an idiot.”

“God, I really missed you.” John ducks the pillow thrown his way with a barked laugh.

 

++++

 

221B pulls back the curtains and greets the afternoon sunlight. Downstairs, Mrs. Hudson hums a satisfied smile as she arranges fresh biscuits on a tray. 

Upstairs, Sherlock’s mobile beeps. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _The Tyger_ By William Blake
> 
> Tyger! Tyger! burning bright  
> In the forests of the night,  
> What immortal hand or eye  
> Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
> 
> ____________
> 
> \- Massive, smoochy thanks to Aderyn, who read and encouraged and suggested and endured. And for the title poem inspiration. She's an eternal muse.  
> \- I don't really buy into canon John being this mopey; he's a strong soul, stubborn and steadfast. But this version is more fun to write. ;)  
> \- I have stared at this piece for months now. I'm a bit sick of it, to be honest, so I decided it's time to post and move on, even though I don't fully love it. The brilliant Kryptaria gave me good advice on that front. So here we are! Self-kudos for the longest thing I've ever written (and it's only 5k words, how do you guys do it?)


End file.
